Dundee and Manchester team discover new insights into how plants make cellulose

Published On Wed 13 Jul 2016 by Cara Longmuir

A collaboration between the Universities of Dundee and Manchester has made new discoveries about one of the most abundant biological substances on the planet.

Dr Piers Hemsley, a Principal Investigator within Dundee’s Division of Plant Sciences and the James Hutton Institute, and Manchester’s Professor Simon Turner have been studying cellulose, the major structural component in plants.

Cellulose essentially provides the plant with its skeleton. It is also one of the most widely used natural resources, best known in the form of wood, cotton and paper, but is increasingly important as a renewable raw material for industrial applications.

Dr Hemsley and Professor Turner identified an important new process in cellulose synthesis called S-acylation. S-acylation involves adding fatty acids to proteins to change the proteins function. They found that when the proteins that create cellulose, known as the cellulose synthase complex, were not S-acylated, plants were no longer able to make cellulose. This makes S-acylation an extremely important part of the cellulose synthesis process.

Dr Hemsley said, “This work will help us to understand how the cellulose synthase complex works, how plants form cellulose and how they lay it down in the patterns that provide strength and structure to the plant.

“Plant cell walls have evolved to resist attack from microbes and insects, but this also means that the cellulose in plant cell walls is hard to break down and free up the sugars needed for fermentation into biofuels or use as industrial precursors.

“This work will help us to manipulate cellulose synthesis so that the cellulose structure is altered and therefore more open to processing. This will hopefully allow us to break down cellulose in cheaper, cleaner and more efficient ways.”

Professor Turner added, “Manipulating and understanding cellulose biosynthesis to provide renewable energy sources and industrial starting products while maintaining food yields is an important goal of plant science research.

“Our work highlights a critical aspect of cellulose synthesis that needs to be considered in fundamental research strategies that could help address food and energy issues in the future.”

The results of this work are published in the latest edition of Science and was supported by the BBSRC.

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